


We Are Older Than Light

by hilaryfaye



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:55:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our kind is older than the stars. Older than light. We are the primordial darkness, the chaos from which all else was born.</p>
<p>But I was not always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Older Than Light

They think we are only monsters. 

I know this because once I was one of them, and I was not what I am now. They do not think I am capable of thought, of feeling pain or regret, even remorse. But there are times, when I am still and idle and left to my own thoughts, that I remember something of what it was to feel those things.

It becomes rarer and rarer these days that I think of myself as an "I." These days it is "we," for we are all we have. We are a group, we are bonded, we are the only things like us. Fearlings we may be, but we know bonds. 

They think we are less than animals, creatures who only know the desire to destroy and terrorize. But we do not destroy each other, and they have not noticed. I cannot say I blame them--because destroy them we do, often, and I must admit that there is no feeling that compares to it--to the euphoria of destruction and of havoc, of chaos and the fear it inspires in these hopelessly ordered, structured people. 

Our kind is older than the stars. Older than light. We are the primordial darkness, the chaos from which all else was born.

But I was not always. 

I remember less and less, as time drags on. I have forgotten what my face looked like, though I know my hair was black. I have forgotten what my name was, though I remember I thought it sounded plain, or even ugly. I remember that it was my mother's name. I do not remember if I loved her. 

I do not remember if I loved anyone, or what it felt like to love them, if I did. 

I am not sad I can't remember--I still remember, at least, that I once was something else. There are others who do not. It is not in me to be sad over that lost life. It was limited. I only regret that I have not forgotten entirely, for then, when I saw the stars through the inky black of night, I might not feel this pang of longing that I cannot quite name. 

I do not know how long I have been what I am now, or how old I was when I ceased to be what I once was. Sometimes I remember snatches of a song or tune, but cannot remember if I liked it in my old life. I remember only that I knew it. 

Few memories create anything in me. 

It is memories of faces that stir me to discontent, wondering who they were and what they meant to me--and if they are dead now. Perhaps they were only humans that I fought, perhaps they were someone I once knew. And that I cannot place the faces--that will drive me half-mad, thinking of them. 

There is one face, out of all of them, that I can place.

And I loathe him. 

He guards this prison in which we have been condemned, and we all hate him as we fear him. (We are not immune to fear merely because we create it. Fear is older than even us.) We mutter among ourselves what we would like to happen to him. 

It was he who led the armies against us, who battled us for years. I know that he has lost friends to us. He hates us as much as we hate him. 

I seem to remember his face at other times--battles, I tell myself, but I am not always sure. Sometimes it seems memory of him appears in my other memories, when I was not what I am now. I may have known him then,and known him well. I am not sure. 

But I know him well enough now, and I have wished a thousand fates worse than death upon him. If I could just slip free of this prison, just past the gates, I could kill him, overwhelm him--perhaps even make him one of us. I know he could not imagine a worse fate than becoming one of us. We know all his fears very intimately.

Well, there is one thing he would hate more than that... but his daughter is far away. It would be much easier to take him, captured here as we are. And perhaps, if he were to become one of us, he could deliver that worse fate himself. 

He was a fool, to take up this post by himself. One man, to guard an entire prison. He walks the line between bravery and idiocy. 

And he is weakening. We can feel it as each day grows harder for him. We feel it in the slump of his shoulders, the weariness in his eyes. He is a tired man, far from home, and he will not last much longer.

So we wait, and we whisper. 

And one day soon, he will be ours. 

We are restless, trapped here. 

They cannot keep the dark contained forever. 

 


End file.
